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MojoKid writes "When an advance copy of Crysis 2 leaked to the Internet a full month before the game's scheduled release, Crytek and Electronic Arts (EA) were understandably miffed and, as it turns out, justified in their fears of mass piracy. Crysis 2 was illegally download on the PC platform 3,920,000 times, 'beating out' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with 3,650,000 illegal downloads. Numbers like these don't bode well for PC gamers and will only serve to encourage even more draconian DRM measures than we've seen in the past."

The most stolen cars are the most popular. Do you think stealing cars has anything to do with sales? And for some strange reason I don't see a lot of car thieves asking to do away with car keys, perhaps they have an ounce of common sense?

Do your car keys lock you out of your car after you use them 5 times such that you need to call your dealer during their regular business hours to grant you 5 more accesses into your car? No? I didn't think so.

Do your car keys lock you out of your car after you use them 5 times such that you need to call your dealer during their regular business hours to grant you 5 more accesses into your car? No? I didn't think so.

I think his point was that not all of the people asking for DRM to be removed are trying to pirate games.

DRM doesn't hinder someone who doesn't license the game at all. It's a mechanism that only incoveniences paying customers and kills the second-hand market. I'm rather baffled that any of you would think otherwise.

That's why the whole DRM is because of piracy line is quite obviously b.s. DRM is to prevent casual sharing, and kill the used market under the excuse of big bad internet piracy.

That's correct. 20 years ago, the battle was over "copy protection", which invariably made it hard for the legitimate purchaser to install and use the software. They battle has moved to "DRM" (same thing, slightly more encompassing), but it's the same battle 20 years later. "Anti-theft" methods that inconvenience legitimate purchasers are ONLY a hindrance to legitimate purchasers. Pirates/thieves/crooks are not stopped by locks or laws, those only keep honest people honest. But when the locks or laws hamper legitimate use by purchasers, people will resort to breaking the locks and laws, and once they resort to having to break them, it's harder to justify spending money to purchase it (e.g. "why should I buy it knowing that I'm going to have to break the lock or 'illegally' download an unlocked copy?").

Copy-protection failed because of this, DRM is failing for the same reasons, and DRM that hampers legitimate users will ALWAYS fail, no matter how strong the DRM or how severe the laws. Make DRM that doesn't hamper legitimate uses and both your DRM costs and your piracy rate will fall. It's a win for everyone (yes, even the crooks who are going to pirate it no matter what).

That's correct. 20 years ago, the battle was over "copy protection", which invariably made it hard for the legitimate purchaser to install and use the software. They battle has moved to "DRM" (same thing, slightly more encompassing), but it's the same battle 20 years later.

I still have dozens of boxes of original Amiga disks that I have saved. I also have 'Pirate' copies of almost all those same floppies. Why? Because it was a similar thing back then. "Copy Protection" that didn't let you make a backup of your disks (or HD install it). For you young'uns, back then playing from you 'original' floppies was taboo.

So if you bought a game back then, after you bought it, if it was copy protected you'd usually find a pirate copy as to not have to use your original disks. There were advantages to the pirate versions too sometimes, like they were cracked to allow cheats or let you install them to a harddrive when the original wouldn't.

It doesn't take one to figure out why a lot of people started skipping the purchasing part and just went to the downloading part. In someways they were 'trained' by the software companies themselves to pirate.

Software companies knew that the view in the market place was never to use your original disks. People felt uncomfortable using their original floppies. But software companies didn't care. So much so that "entire" legitimate industries grew, for just this reason, that offered special hardware to duplicate disks regardless of copy protection as well as lots of software to try to do the same.

still remember those days. You either had relatively unintrusive copy protection like asking for a specifiv word in the manual or those cardboard thingies from Lucasfilm Games.
OR you had those abominations where the manufacturer introduced a fault onto the disk and the game checked for that fault. Some games allowed intallation to HD as long as they were the original install disks. Some games only allowed a limited number of installs(that was at a time when HD space was at a premium and you could have only a single digit number of games installed). Some games required you to have the original floppies inserted while playing.
Now, floppies were not very relyable. Especially when in the hands of a grubby teenager. Also on the PC the drives went wrong quite often, potentially destroying the originals.
During the early CD days there was hardly any copy protection apart from checking for the presence of the CD medium. Or having most of the game on CD because the mediums capacity was close, equal or higher than HD space. CD writers were jolly expensive so copying CDs was not trivial. The old, horrid "multimedia", "interactive movie" days.
then we went again through a "damaged medium" phase making copying impossible. Then we had the offensive BS phase were copy protection software embedded itsself deeply into the OS and in some cases even made copying music CDs virtually impossible.
Then we had this "always connected to the internet" scheme.
Now we have this "value added" DRM scheme where all your stuff is in "teh cloud". Which is basically the above disguising as something beneficial.

During any of these phases the pirated version was less hassle. ...apart from the multimedia days. But it was hardly worth it back then. Interactive movies, my ass.

The Corolla has actually been on the most stolen list for a very long time, only recently relinquishing its top 10 place to alternatives from Honda as they become similarly reliable and popular. In any case, you bring the argument that cheaper is the solution. I think there's a logic in that, but it also reminds me of a common mistake we make in assuming that by fixing one thing we can solve the entire problem. You can reduce the price of software to barely above cost, but the torrented alternative would st

You can reduce the price of software to barely above cost, but the torrented alternative would still be more attractive.

I challenge this assertion. Assuming the illegal and legal copies both are DRM unencumbered and the game is priced along the lines of 10 dollars or less, I'd wager that many fewer would go through the hassle of torrenting (you *still* have the legal threat/risk hanging over it without technical enforcement, distribution channels change, there is greater security risk associated with unauthorized channels, etc). I think the RIAA (after being forced by Apple) demonstrates this to be true. Before embracing

Now if that was the most copied car, your statement might have some relevance. Let's be honest here, supply all the materials, push the button and have an instant porsche, ferrari or a rolls royce what kind of greedy wankers would complain.

Copying is not stealing, never was and never will be.

I gave up a long time ago on buying the latest release PC game, full of games, generally buggered up DRM targeted honest customers and way overpriced. There is just so many PC games out there, I generally wait a ye

So you lie to the customers and cheat them on bad games, so why aren't they entitled to pirate games to get their money back.

I dumped so many thousands of dollars on EA and the other studios, from the 8-bit era all the way up to the PS2; a lot of the time for games I discovered were not nearly worth the price I paid, after the fact.

Because of this, I don't feel too guilty about pirating before I buy. Plus, with all the "always on" bullshit they're adding today, I have no choice but to pirate if I don't want to clog my hard drive with shit that I do not need. The whole "requires Steam" thing in itself is fucking bullshit, I don'

'd like to see if there's a a correlation between most pirated game and top selling game.

Except that that does not take into account that Crysis 2 was shit.

Forget DRM, publishing that game was punishing paying customers.

I'm willing to bet the more pirated a game is the better its sales generally are as well.

9 times out of 10 you'd be right. The highest selling PC games are also the highest torrented. I'd also like to know the correlation between advertising and illegitimate downloading. Saints Row the Third I'd think would be an ideal case.

I was going to post something about how DRM doesn't affect pirates because it must have been circumvented in order for the game to be pirated. Then I remembered that I both bought and pirated Skyrim so I wouldn't have to install Steam.

Approximately 0%. The 3.6 million (guesstimated) downloaded copies were DRM-free. DRM did *nothing* to impeded the upload and mass distribution of these titles, did nothing to constrain the capabilities of those who opted to download it, but did constrain the capabilities of people who gave their cash to the software vendor and endeavor *not* to download their software via unauthorized channels. People who download a pirated version need not have a working internet connection to play single player, need

All it takes is one hacker working in his mom's basement to defeat a DRM scheme that cost millions of dollars to develop and the crack will be circulated around the world in an hour. How can game publishers not understand this after all these years? Want more people to buy your product? Reduce the price.

Trying to protect games makes them suck. I remember I had a game from EA on my C64 that hammered the hell out of my disk drive every time it loaded. It took almost 5 minutes to load and by the time it was finished the drive was hot enough to fry with. It finally hammered it out of alignment and I had to fix it. I finally learned at a user group meeting (when I was stationed in Germany in the 80's, damn those German crackers were good) how to strip the protection off the disk and I never, ever bought a legit copy of any EA software since. As a matter of honor I always pay for shareware but those who try to stick it to me I stick it to them. Screw EA.

It's worse: it actually backfires. Anecdote time: Bioshock 2 is on a Steam sale right now for 4.99. I have already played it... er... "at a friend's house" or whatever, but I won't be buying it now, even at its low price, because I don't want to have to deal with Games For Windows Live. I draw the line at one crapware on my machine per game, and preferably one that adds a bit of value. There's no way in hell I'm going to run two types of DRM at the same time, especially when one of them limits the number of

I concur. It's also why I've been very attracted to indy developers as of late: less formulaic bullshit, more novel play (which sort of ties in with the previous), and no DRM telling me what I can and can't do with the software I've purchased.

Actually, I think you mean that DRM never affects the pirates. You're mistaking affect (to have a changing influence) vs effect (to have a causal influence). In truth, DRM probably does effect piracy, in that DRM is a major contributing reason that plain old people decide to "become a pirate" and apply cracks their purchased products.

It seems every DRM can be got around, except for those copying the MW2 model and proprietary console media.

Indeed, the more difficult the DRM to crack, the more credibility to be gained from cracking it.

So what should games publishers do? In order to maximise profit, they should do what they are doing. Keep producing endless COD clones with MW2 server model, wait for a proprietary console and keep whining.

Dumb. Pirates can't play multiplayer, as a rule. You call that no effect? Maybe game developers need to *interleave* the single and multiplayer parts of the game, so proceeding in the single player means performing some tasks in multiplayer to "unlock" progress. Since multiplayer is less vulnerable to piracy (depending on architecture, of course), it might provide a DRM-without-DRM effect.

Maybe game developers need to *interleave* the single and multiplayer parts of the game, so proceeding in the single player means performing some tasks in multiplayer to "unlock" progress.

That would mean that you cannot play single-player without Internet connection, something that hasn't worked too well for many a people so far. Not everyone has Internet connection 24/7, some people have very unstable connections, and some just simply cannot have Internet on at any predetermined moment and cannot change that fact themselves.

Since multiplayer is less vulnerable to piracy (depending on architecture, of course), it might provide a DRM-without-DRM effect.

There is nothing about multiplayer code that makes it inherently less vulnerable, it's just that the pirates don't have access to the server binary. You can still just a

I was going to say something similar. I don't like DRM, but at least Steam puts the user first and DRM second. It may sound like a fanboy, but I buy lots of Steam games under $5 that I typically play for a few hours and get bored with. You know what? I got my $5 worth out of them, and helped support the least oppressive method of DRM out there.

I "get" that game producers need some way to insure they make a profit and not make pirating too easy. Yes, they should make better games, yes, many of them have prices that are ridiculous, and obviously one pirated game does NOT equal one sale lost, blah blah blah. I just choose not to buy those games that use oppressive DRM and try to buy games with little or none. (they are out there) But for main stream games, at least Steam makes the experience seemless and supports the games after the sale. I still play TFC and HL1 once in a blue moon, they are from over a decade ago, and they are still supported. I have pirated a few games in my almost 50 years, but now it is "cheaper" to buy them on Steam, if you consider the value of my time to keep the games up to date, find, patch, install, patch, etc.

At least Steam is trying to bridge the gap between producers and consumers, without shafting the consumers. And yes, it is hard to beat their sale price. Well, gotta go and play Plants vs. Zombies, bought it from them for $3.39 earlier this week....

Numbers like these don't bode well for PC gamers and will only serve to encourage even more draconian DRM measures than we've seen in the past.

Thus only punishing customers who paid, not the people downloading the game illegally and applying a crack.

Makes perfect sense

And thus making the cracked version more useful than the retail version. It's not uncommon for people who buy a legitimate copy to download a cracked copy as well, because the cracked copy is less annoying. Increasing the DRM will increase piracy.

Exactly.
I purchased two copies of Skyrim on November 11, 2011. One for the PC, and one for the PS3 (For the kids) - Bethsoft got my 130 bucks to add to their 600+ million in sales.
I still have the PC copy in it's package in my desk drawer... and have been playing the non-Steam version of Skyrim since NOVEMBER 10th.
I had been planning on purchasing Skyrim since announcement and I did this only to avoid the mandatory Steam installation. To date, I have never played any games on Steam - the requireme

As pointed out, Crysis 2 had a big leak a month ahead of launch. For a month the *only* way to get your hands on it was through illicit download. People are impatient and took whatever means necessary to get their game (the game companies love this impatience, a lot of people drop full retail early on knowing the price will fall like a stone in just a few months).

You have a PS3, you're used to paying $60 for a new game or whatever the average actually is.

You have a PC, you're used to paying $60 for a new game, except when you plug in your ipod/iphone and play a new $0.99 game. Hmm why am I paying sixty times more for some games than others?

On/. we know why the iphone game costs a bit less due to technical knowledge of how they're made and what goes into them. That is of course completely irrelevant to the general public, who merely know that "a couple hours of fun with a new game" sometimes costs $60 and sometimes costs $1.

Even if you combine the estimated number of illegal downloads with the official sales figures, the number of copies on PC including people who didn't even pay is still less than half of either xbox 360 or ps3. It isn't the efficacy of DRM but rather the market in general.

> I assume this is because the games are harded to pirate on a console, they can get away with pricing it higher.

I believe it's actually, at least in part, due to licensing costs from the console manufacturer. Traditionally this compensates for the hardware being sold at or below cost, although I believe the Wii was profitable per-unit at launch.

The price on a console game is usually set by the console manufacturers. So the launch of all games is usually the ~$60 (depending on country). As the game gets older it'll start to drop in price. Microsoft and Sony set the launch price to be the same, and they also set the licensing costs to be about the same. I don't know the normal price of licensing for the console but I think its something like $10 per disc sold, because they sell the consoles at a loss and make up their profit on this licensing.

What the hell is that for a comparison? Next you'll say Angry Birds is comparable to Skyrim?

As much as I find pricing to be on the high side, this is just an absurd comparison. Actually play the damn games before commenting on how much they should cost. Plus, saying PC gamers are "used" to paying $60 for a game.... I don't know where you live, but I'm used to paying less than $15 for just about every game by doing the extremely difficult exercise of waiting a few months, at worst a year, after the game's in

What the hell is that for a comparison? Next you'll say Angry Birds is comparable to Skyrim?

Yes it is, in gameplay hours. The standard deviation for AB is a heck of a lot narrower than Skyrim but the mean and probably median are mostly the same. In my family only 1 out of 4 (that "1" being me) has played more than an hour of Skyrim, but "everyone" seems to have suffered thru a roughly similar week long AB addiction.

Actually play the damn games before commenting on how much they should cost.

Exactly what I did. Well, I didn't play Crysis 2. A FPS where you play a marine running around a formerly human living environment with a rifle and shoot aliens and/or anything that

This might be part of the reason why "hardcore" gamers are so dismissive of "casuals". If I only get a couple of hours out of a $60 game, I've made a huge mistake.

That's a pretty insightful idea. I could run with that and suggest its why "hardcore" game = remake of a sequel of the same tired old FPS.... Very boring, but its too scary to spend $60 on something that might be fun or might suck, so having basically ONE GAME with $60 level packs makes console purchasing much less stressful. Oh look, WWII level pack number 35235, etc.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a multiplayer game - as far as I know the cracked game will NOT let you play in multiplayer mode... so the majority of the people that downloaded the game probably purchased legal keys or stuck to playing the single player mode or playing with friends in LAN.

Basically, the download acts as DEMO, incentive to buy the access to the multiplayer mode, and it definitely does not mean that a download equals a lost sale.

As for Crysis 2, I'm not sure how many of those downloads were just to "benchmark" their video cards...

Even so, even if a large part of the downloads were pirates, it doesn't mean lost money... it just means they don't make as much money as they wanted. I know in my own case I'm currently taking advantage of every Steam sale to buy games I pirated and enjoyed in the past - I couldn't afford spending 40 euro on a game but now I have no problems paying 5-10 euro for each of the STALKER games, for example.

Oh rubbish people who pirate don't care about DRM. People who care that much about DRM will not buy the product. Paying customers are put off by draconian DRM systems and they vote with their wallet and buy games from other publishers.

DRM does not make people pirates. They already were pirates if they are downloading a cracked version. I'm a paying customer, DRM just puts me off their titles. I have limited money to spend so I just spend it on other games that don't have DRM. Piracy is a hassle compared to purchasing proper legit games with minimal DRM.

You are joking, right? A software developer (individual or company) that leaked their product early would be opening themselves to massive lawsuits from the publishers. A developer leaking their game early would be career and/or financial suicide.

I'll concede, there are some dodgy looking "leaks" of Windows early builds; these are seriously cut down, typically time-limited, and MS is its own publisher, and that's even presuming they're not actual leaks.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was also on Steam, and only missed being the piracy top-dog by about 10%.
> Whether that difference has to do with being available on digital download services, or just because people are attached to the online play for Black Ops over Crysis and needed legit copies to play, it's hard to tell.

The game was sold over 3 million times. Until proofen otherwise I assume that 75% of all illegal downloaders used that as a demo and bought the game afterwards...the other 25% found it not worthy to buy...I wonder if we can map that against IQ statistics...

Was salivated over for its eye candy, not necessarily for its gameplay. It's a benchmarking tool. Then again, people who downloaded it for benchmarking certainly had no qualms over blowing thousands for a top of the line gaming rig....

This is what the ignorant executives at software games companies don't understand. They can't really sympathize with those that pirate. They can't get in their heads. As "PC games" are reduced it will only motivate those sorts of people to move to rooted consoles. By rooted console I mean hacked to the point it's connected up to a PC for all it's input and output. Games will still be distributed over the internet and pirated. Nothing short of eliminating all existing computer network technology will prevent that.

The pity here is that the PC is the Superior game platform. So when PC version of a game is put up on the net there is little motivation or want for the console version of the game. But as the PC games disappear consoles become the new focus for pirates. Pirates are techies. The harder something is to do the more pride and status you get from doing it.

The weakest link to DRM is the internet. It only takes only one person to hack into a locked platform and then they share that information with everyone.

The Solution: The only strategy that will actually work is putting crackers on the payroll. As it is now they can't approach a company like Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft because of the "digital" IP laws these companies have pushed. It looks too much like extortion. But in truth that is the solution, to turn the resources and talent of the internet to your favor. Getting the crackers to fix the hardware and software themselves.

How you come up with an appropriate reward amount has to be open for negotiation. The companies and the crackers must be free to call each others negotiation bluffs without repercussions for the crackers. If the cracker won't accept a specific amount of money then he must be able to release details of his crack. The company can then handle the repercussions and then fix the crack themselves. The cracks are not kept secret, they are actually fixed. There is motivation to fix them. And the free market then decides what is fair compensation.

There then becomes an industry of "professionals" (even more motivated and talented) to not only develop security measures but to defeat them. They actually get a cut of the action. The current crackers doing it as a hobby then have no chance because if they had the ability they would be working for a professional cracking company or have their own.

In essence the problem doesn't actually exist. The entertainment companies are greedy and just don't want to pay that percentage. So they bully people through law suits and create laws that inhibit free speech and the free market economics. They would rather give the percentages to lawyers and politicians.

Obviously there's a price discrimination problem here. I you look at those millions of pirate downloads and don't think: "If only we could somehow sell the game to some of those people at a lower price, we'd make a ton more money". It's like a grocery store not stocking off-brands and getting mad when people shop elsewhere. If you cut the price in half and three times as many people buy the game, it's a big win.

With some in-game product placement you could even make money off the pirates "Dear Pepsico,

Please, by all means use more Draconian DRM on your games. I DO NOT HAVE TO BUY THEM, I PROMISE!

I don't pirate, either. Pirating a game would mean I actually liked it, but I won't even acknowledge the existence of games/companies which employ asinine DRM measures.

It is fast coming to the point where indie game quality is as good as, if not better than, AAA title quality. I'm happy to give my AAA title business to smaller indie devs who understand the concept of not punishing their customers because they live in a perpetual state of fear for their bottom line.

1. Big-name PC games used to be $50 (and some still are). Now most are $60, but there's no justification for the increase.

2. PC games used to be better than their console ports. Now, the consoles are the main platforms and the PC is the after-thought port.

3. DRM schemes have become progressively more annoying and intrusive (first you had to have a CD, then you had to activate online, then you could only activate a limited number of times, now you have to be online all the time).

4. DRM only impacts the legitimate, paying customer. There's no DRM that can't be cut out with some disassembly and a hex editor (or spoofed in some other way), so pirates don't have to deal with it.

5. Steam is the platform of choice for distributing PC games electronically nowadays, yet many primarily console-oriented producers refuse to embrace it.

Fuck off with your fear mongering. It doesn't bode well for game vendors, because nobody NEEDS to buy their games.

Crysis 2 was highly pirated because it wasn't worth buying. Linear, scripted, aggravating and out of the box it didn't even look that good until they came out with a bandaid overlay to tack on some DirectX 11 features. That didn't make up for the lousy game though.

Same with Modern Warfare 3, which is absolutely the worst deal of any Call of Duty game to date. The campaign is a few hours long and the graphics are mediocre at best. It's a boring game, with a "more of the same shit" feel to it. The multiplayer is a drag too and the maps are boring. I didn't buy it, but I played it on my friend's Xbox. I finished the whole campaign while he was sitting on his computer playing World of Wankercraft then proceeded to multiplayer, to get aggravated by a bunch of pimple wizards.

What entitles them to payment of $60 for such rubbish? I'm sure that not everyone hates those two examples and would play them, but they wouldn't want to fork out that money.

"More draconian DRM" means even fewer sales. Some of these games are retarded. I bought Fable III through Steam without reading carefully enough. That it needs Steam is a given, but also it requires Games for Windows Live sign in to play it at all (which is a highly insulting and annoying waste of time) and if that isn't enough, it also has Securom even though it's not on optical media (They are using Securom for an additional method of restrictive product activation). Go fuck yourselves... it would have probably been easier to pirate that game.

But you know as well as me, playable requirements and minimum requirements are two completely different things. Minimum requirements only tell you just that, will the game run or not. It doesn't tell you if it is playable. Remember the old minimum specs for Windows XP? Only 128mb? Sure it would run, but it would be completely unusable.

I also have issues of needing to install software to "assess" if I have the correct hardware to run their software. That to me is just asking to be loaded with monitoring/mal

MW3 appears to have sold about a million copies on PC, Crysis 2 has sold about 500,000.

Incidentally, Crysis 2 sold 1 million copies on xbox360, and 800,000 on the ps3. MW3 did 11.5 million on 360, and 9.2 million on PS3.

It's still hard to derive significant meaning. MW3 has a much bigger marketing push behind it and, frankly, Crysis 2 wasn't a particularly good game. It's initially interesting that Crysis 2 had such a higher rate of illegal downloading, *but* the leak ahead of launch explains that. It's impossible to tell if the month of availability ahead of 'launch' had a chilling effect on sales (my opinion is the sales look about in line with relative popularity with MW3, with the PC perhaps being kinder to Crysis than the console platforms in *relative* terms), and it's impossible to tell how many of those downloads coincided with a legitimate purchase (obviously less than 500k, but some do buy retail and then pirate for no-cd behavior or otherwise being free from DRM) and it's impossible to tell of the rest, how many would have *possibly* bothered to pay if they couldn't have gotten it for free.

Of course the one fact to take away: DRM does *nothing* except inconvenience legitimate users. Both titles were DRM encumbered and both were copied more than they were purchased. DRM does not impair those seeking it to copy in a *significant* way, but it does cause pain to your paying customers.

Ok, it's been downloaded 3 million times. But how many copies of the game did they sell? Half a statistic is meaningless.

While I agree with you completely, the only reason they give half the stat is is because they want the public [read: regulators] to think that a download equals a lost sale; much the same way the RI/MPAA tries to equate a download equals a lost sale.

So, since there are 3,920,000 non-paid for downloads, they want you to believe they have lost well over $254,800,000 due to illegal downloads

They should embrace the valve model, especially since they don't have to deal with retail packaging, shipping, returns, etc and make it cheap, easy and convenient. I mean does anybody know how much money went through steam on the Xmas sale? i bet it was garbage trucks just full of money because its so simple and cheap, just "whip out CC, push button, get game'. The problem with "call of honor crysis edition" style games is the publishers have deliberately made their games to have no legs as everyone knows once "call of honor crysis edition II" comes out nobody will be playing the first one and since they are appealing to the "must win teh benches!" tards who frankly spend every last dime they can get on supercoolers for their massive OCs they simply don't spend $60 a pop on games that will be tossed next quarter.

Make it follow the valve model, give the game some real legs, and frankly they'll never have to give a wet fart what the benches tards do because that single game can be making them money year after year AFTER year. I mean how old is HL: Deathmatch now? valve was nice enough to throw it in for the fuck of it with the complete HL:2 pack I picked up on the sale and that thing STILL has tons of people playing it. They are also still selling and making cash on CS and Day of defeat and those things are older than dirt yet because they have legs they are still full of players.

I want to feel sorry for them but its kinda hard when you pick up the game in the $30 bin and find its deserted or worse EA has pulled the plug on MP which i think ought to at least force EA to put out a sticker to be placed on boxes saying MP doesn't work anymore. If they let folks host their own servers more and threw out the occasional update with a new map here or there for the older games then the long tail on sales would mean the benchtards could be ignored. Gabe had it right IMHO when he said to the effect "piracy is your competitor offering a better product" because that means the price is too high, the game doesn't have long enough legs, you simply aren't hitting the sweet spot. Now if you'll excuse me there is this one little shit in HL:DM that keeps jamming a rocket up my ass and i think I'm gonna introduce him to Mr Python. Kinda sad though when i've had more fun with a 10 year old game than I did the last "call of honor crysis edition" I played.

Bimbo Newton Crosby they NEVER mention the losses that came from losing steam. it has gotten to the point if it isn't just DIRT cheap on Amazon like the Kane & Lynch II I picked up for a dollar just to see if it stunk as bad as the reviews (it does BTW) I stick to Steam and GOG because.....why bother? Its "push button and get game" and while I too could have trivially pirated each and every single game i got on the Steam sale (I currently have 20 games in Steam with Hunted:Demon's Forge dloading which w

XBox made up 57% of the sales, 29% for PS3 and PC only 14%. Probably in part to the 3 million downloads of the game via torrents.

Perhaps their crappy sales numbers are in some large part due to what the parent said. The vast majority of "PC" games these days are just crappy console ports. It's hard to get too excited about dropping 60 bucks on a game that you'll likely play once and then only rarely, if ever, again. I'm sure the counter argument to this is that no one buys Crysis/MW/WhateverFPSIsHot for the single player campaign. Maybe that is true. Personally, bad single player == no deal.

Massively overestimated, almost certainly. It's not at all uncommon to download a torrent from three or four sites before you find one with enough seeders to finish in your lifetime. Conservatively, I suspect their estimates are high by at least a factor of two if that was their methodology.